From Allah to Ashes - Who’s at Gitmo and what they’ve done to Islam (hint: it's not our military!)

or all the grief America is suffering over Guantanamo Bay, U.S. soldiers there might as well have flushed 1,001 Korans down 1,001 toilets — live on Al-Jazeera TV. Newsweek's May 15 retraction of its false and deadly Koran-in-the-can story has worked as well as a severed brake line in slowing calls by Democrats (and some wobbly Republicans) to padlock the terrorist detention facility. Illinois's Dick Durbin, the U.S. Senate's No. 2 Democrat, infamously compared Gitmo to the Soviet Gulag, Nazi concentration camps, and the Khmer Rouge's killing fields, despite the base's paucity of firing squads, gas chambers, or neatly stacked human skulls. After a week of brickbats, Durbin tearfully offered a qualified apology for his remarks.

Durbin and other Bushophobes should squirt some of their copious bile on those who esteem devout Muslims far less than do Gitmo's guards. Administration critics largely overlook the way the Guantanamo detainees' Islamofascist comrades mistreat fellow Muslims. Leftists shriek when a Gitmo guard forgets to don surgical gloves before touching a Koran. But when Taliban, al Qaeda, and other terrorists blast mosques to bits, "Well. . . uh. . . what's on PBS?"

Associated Press reports, among others, document (see this chart) how militant Islamists (primarily Sunnis) have treated Shiite shrines with all the deference the SS showed synagogues in the 1940s.

June 1, 2005: A suicide bomber blasted the funeral of Mullah Abdul Fayaz, a moderate cleric, at his eponymous mosque in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He killed Kabul's police chief and 20 others, while wounding 50.

"The attacker was a member of al-Qaeda. We have found documents on his body that show he was an Arab," Kandahar governor Gul Agha Sherzai told the AP's Noor Khan. "We had an intelligence report that Arab al-Qaeda teams had entered Afghanistan and had been planning terrorist attacks."

January 20, 2005: A suicide bomber exploded inside the Ghocha Park Mosque in Sheberghan, injuring 21, six reportedly in critical condition.

January 16, 2005: An anti-personnel mine went off at the Sal Metra mosque in Urozgan province, wounding two worshippers.

"Mullah Fayaz said the Taliban were not following Islam and that their interpretation of Islam was wrong," Kandahar police chief Mohammed Akram told reporters. "This is the . . . reason they probably attacked Mullah Fayaz's mosque."

To date, colleagues of the Gitmo Boys have killed 21 and wounded 89 in Afghan mosque bombings.

May 23, 2005: A car bomb at a Baghdad mosque killed two and wounded 22, including 11 children.

April 22, 2005: A car bomb at a Baghdad mosque disrupted Friday prayers, killing nine and wounding 26.

March 10, 2005: A suicide bomber detonated himself during a funeral at a Mosul mosque, murdering 47 people and injuring at least 101.

February 18, 2005: On Ashoura, Shiites' holiest day, homicide bombers attacked two Baghdad mosques, killing 25 and wounding 30.

February 18, 2005: A car bomb killed eight and hurt 10 at an Iskandariyah mosque.

August 26, 2004: Mortar shells pummeled a Najaf mosque, leaving 27 dead and 63 injured.

March 2, 2004: Homicide bombers, mortars, and hidden explosives at mosques in Baghdad and Karbala killed 181 and wounded 573 Ashoura worshippers.

Add the 386 killed and 970 injured in Iraq to the Afghan figures above: The terrorist pals of Guantanamo's al-Qaeda and Taliban residents have butchered 407 Muslims and injured 1,059 more in these mosque attacks alone.

After crying for these murdered and maimed Muslims, weep for the Korans destroyed in this mayhem. At worst, a May 27 Pentagon probe revealed, U.S. personnel at Guantanamo mistreated Korans on 13 occasions, only five deliberately, notwithstanding Army requirements that soldiers "handle the Koran as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art."

In one "atrocity," a Koran was stacked atop another Koran on a TV set. Elsewhere, interrogators twice "either touched or stood over" the Koran during questioning. In the most unfortunate episode, a soldier relieved himself outdoors last March 25. The breeze shifted towards a cellblock, and an adjacent air duct splattered some of his urine onto a detainee's nearby Koran and uniform. The soldier was reprimanded and reassigned to gate-guard duty. The detainee scored a new Koran and a fresh uniform.

Compare this to the Islamofascist explosions and fires that repeatedly reduce the received word of Allah to ashes.

According to the Pentagon inquiry, Muslim detainees at Gitmo mishandled the Koran 15 times. One inmate used his Koran as a pillow. Another tried to annoy guards by tearing up his Koran and stuffing its pages into — get this — a toilet.

Despite the more common detainee disrespect for these Korans — furnished by U.S. taxpayers, not the Book of the Month Club — America somehow remains this story's perceived villain.

While human-rights activists seemingly regard the Gitmo detainees as mere shoplifters who stumbled into eastern Cuba, these are actually hardened killers who threaten and sometimes attack their guards and interrogators and promise to kill Jews and Americans if sprung.

The June 20 Time described the interrogation of one of these thugs. Mohammed al-Qahtani, also known as Detainee 063, tried to enter America via Orlando International Airport in August 2001, but suspicious immigration officials turned him down. Just yards away, waiting to pick him up, was none other than September 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta.

Federal investigators believe al-Qahtani would have been "the muscle" on United Airlines Flight 93, the only jet seized by four, not five, hijackers. Had Atta collected him in Orlando, al-Qahtani ultimately might have shielded that flight's cockpit from the passenger rebellion that steered that 757 into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. If so, al-Qahtani and company might have reached Washington, D.C. and slammed Flight 93 into the very U.S. Capitol in which Senator Durbin uttered his despicable words.

Rather than expire in a fireball, al-Qahtani crossed paths with U.S. soldiers on the Afghan-Pakistani border after he fled the battle of Tora Bora. The U.S. military flew him to Gitmo in February 2002.

While most Americans would love to see al-Qahtani hung, drawn, and quartered, his "abuse" recalls a Monty Python sketch in which agents of the Spanish Inquisition torture a victim with soft cushions. According to a classified interrogation history that Time excerpted, "A latex glove was inflated and labeled the 'sissy slap' glove." On December 13, 2002, "The glove was touched to the detainee's face periodically after explaining the terminology to him." Al-Qahtani watched a puppet show "satirizing the detainee's involvement with al-Qaeda." Two days earlier, "He was taken outside to see a family of banana rats. . . Detainee was compared to the family of banana rats and reinforced that they had more love, freedom, and concern than he had. Detainee began to cry during the comparison." It is unclear whether al-Qahtani welled up when interrogators made him listen to the music of Christina Aguilera.

The toughest thing this almost-20th September 11 hijacker faced during interrogation was having water poured on his head. In another instance, he was given intravenous drips for rehydration after he refused to drink water. As he became replenished, interrogators refused his requests for a bathroom break until he answered their questions. He eventually urinated in his pants. Messy? Yes. Mengele? No.

"He is beginning to understand the futility of his situation," an interrogator noted 30 minutes later. "He is much closer to compliance than at the beginning of the operation."

Once interrogators broke al-Qahtani, he discussed, among other things, al-Qaeda's border-penetration techniques, Osama bin Laden's health condition, and the missions of "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid and "Dirty Bomber" Jose Padilla. As a June 12 Pentagon document explains, al-Qahtani also identified 30 Gitmo detainees as former bin Laden bodyguards. This should help interrogators question them. Connecting these dots may help U.S. officials prevent Muslim extremists from murdering innocent civilians in America and elsewhere. Nothing less is at stake here.

The White House should energetically, concretely refute its critics' constant carping. Start with President Bush. He should deliver a major address presenting clear and convincing evidence of who the Gitmo Boys are, how they got there, what kind of intelligence they have yielded, the nearly polite tactics that generated this information, the violence they have promised if freed, and the deaths engineered by some of those who have been released. The Pentagon counts a dozen Guantanamo alumni who have relapsed. They have fired on U.S. GIs in Afghanistan and even murdered an Afghan judge.

It also is worthwhile to contrast America's regard for Islam with the rampant carnage the detainees' cohorts have exacted upon other Muslims. America's detainees eat religiously appropriate meals, hear five daily calls to prayer on U.S. taxpayer-funded loudspeakers, and face Mecca accurately, thanks to arrows painted on their cell floors that point to Islam's holiest spot. According to former Army sergeant Erik Saar's Gitmo chronicle, Inside the Wire, one FBI interrogator grew a beard "as a sort of show of respect for their faith." (In contrast, consider a July 7 hearing before U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain regarding Bashir Noorzai, a suspected Afghan heroin smuggler and Taliban confidant. Noorzai, among other things, has complained that being in solitary confinement in a federal jail in Downtown Manhattan has left him disoriented and unable to face Mecca when he prays.)

Meanwhile, the allies of our captured enemy combatants convert observant Muslims into body parts.

Presidential leadership — coupled with a coherent, pan-administration communications campaign involving facts, figures, and photographs — might help shrink this undeserved cancer on America's reputation. Sadly, the White House has yet to schedule a doctor's appointment.

Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a senior fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Fairfax, Virginia.

Remember the terrorist, Richard Reid, the guy who got on a plane with a bomb built into his shoe and tried to light it?
Did you know his trial is over?
Did you know he was sentenced?
Did you see/hear any of the judge's comments on TV/Radio?
Didn't think so.

Everyone should hear what the judge had to say.

Prior to sentencing, the Judge asked the defendant if he had anything to say.
Defendant's response: After admitting his guilt to the court for the record, Reid also admitted his "allegiance to Osama bin Laden, to Islam, and to the religion of Allah," and defiantly stated "I think I will not apologize for my actions," and told the court "I am at war with your country."
Judge Young then delivered the statement quoted below:
Ruling by Judge William Young, US District Court.
January 30, 2003, United States vs. Reid.
Judge Young: "Mr. Richard C. Reid, hearken now to the sentence the Court imposes upon you.
On counts 1, 5 and 6 the Court sentences you to life in prison in the custody of the United States Attorney General. On counts 2, 3, 4 and 7, the Court sentences you to 20 years in prison on each count, the sentence on each count to run consecutive with the other.
That's 80 years. On count 8 the Court sentences you to the mandatory 30 years consecutive to the 80 years just imposed. The Court imposes upon you each of the eight counts a fine of $250,000 for the aggregate fine of $2 million. The Court accepts the government's recommendation with respect to restitution and orders restitution in the amount of $298.17 to Andre Bousquet and $5,784 to American Airlines. The Court imposes upon you the $800 special assessment.
The Court imposes upon you five years supervised release simply because the law requires it. But the life sentences are real life sentences so I need go no further. This is the sentence that is provided for by our statutes. It is a fair and just sentence. It is a righteous sentence.
Let me explain this to you. We are not afraid of you or any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We have been through the fire before. There is all too much war talk here and I say that to everyone with the utmost respect. Here in this court, we deal with individuals as individuals and care for individuals as individuals. As human beings, we reach out for justice.
You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier, gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or if you think you are a soldier. You are not----- you are a terrorist. And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not meet with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.
So war talk is way out of line in this court. You are a big fellow. But you are not that big. You're no warrior. I've know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal that is guilty of multiple attempted murders. In a very real sense, State Trooper Santiago had it right when you first were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and where the TV crews were, and he said: "You're no big deal."
You are no big deal.
What your able counsel and what the equally able United States attorneys have grappled with and what I have as honestly as I know how tried to grapple with, is why you did something so horrific. What was it that led you here to this courtroom today?
I have listened respectfully to what you have to say. And I ask you to search your heart and ask yourself what sort of unfathomable hate led you to do what you are guilty and admit you are guilty of doing. And I have an answer for you. It may not satisfy you, but as I search this entire record, it comes as close to understanding as I know.
It seems to me you hate the one thing that to us is most precious. You hate our freedom. Our individual freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we individually choose. Here, in this society, the very wind carries freedom. It carries it everywhere from sea to shining sea. It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom. So that everyone can see, truly see, that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discretely. It is for freedom's sake that your lawyers are striving so vigorously on your behalf and have filed appeals, will go on in their representation of you before other judges.
We Americans are all about freedom. Because we all know that the way we treat you, Mr. Reid, is the measure of our own liberties. Make no mistake though. It is yet true that we will bare any burden; pay any price, to preserve our freedoms. Look around this courtroom. Mark it well. The world is not going to long remember what you or I say here. Day after tomorrow, it will be forgotten, but this, however, will long endure. Here in this courtroom and courtrooms all across America, the American people will gather to see that justice, individual justice, justice, not war, individual justice is in fact being done. The very President of the United States through his officers will have to come into courtrooms and lay out evidence on which specific matters can be judged and juries of citizens will gather to sit and judge that evidence democratically, to mold and shape and refine our sense of justice.
See that flag, Mr. Reid? That's the flag of the United States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag stands for freedom. And it always will.
Mr. Custody Officer - stand him down.

So, how much of Judge Young's comments did we hear on our TV sets?

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